Carol Rava

Introduce Yourself

Why do you want to serve as a Seattle Public School Board Director?

Carol Rava has spent more than 25 years as an education policy professional focused on improving equitable access to and completion of high school and postsecondary credentials. She has been a grantmaker, a co-founder of two non-profits, and a school district executive; she is a parent of three children all of whom attended Seattle public schools (over 18+ years). Educational equity is her life’s work. Carol is running for Seattle School Board to bring her knowledge and experience to a district that has struggled to listen to families and students, to ensure academic excellence for all, to keep its students safe, and to effectively oversee its finances. District enrollment, student performance, and community confidence have all suffered. Carol brings both the parent perspective and the professional expertise to restore trust in the district and create stronger schools for all students.

Board Skills
What skills or perspectives do you bring that are currently missing or underrepresented on the
school board?

I have a Master's in Education Policy and have directly worked in the field for the past 25 years. I have led local (SPS), statewide (WA, CA, TX), and national efforts to improve equitable access to high quality educational options for students in K12, higher education, and workforce training. I am steeped in the policy, research, stakeholder engagement, and effective communications that must inform any system-level educational improvement efforts. And I have been a senior school district leader at Seattle Public Schools and understand the challenges and paths forward. Finally, I have worked on the district's budget, have managed large budgets directly, and am currently completing a Certificate in K12 Finance through Georgetown's Edunomics Center. I bring the professional expertise across all of these areas - that the school district desperately needs.

Top Challenge
What is SPS’s biggest challenge, and what specific action would you take to help solve it?

Balancing the budget for SPS is the biggest challenge. And we have to start by asking three key data-driven questions to guide the process:

1-What expenditures most affect student outcomes? And which have shown they positively do? 2-What are the various options for addressing the structural deficit?

3-And for each option, what are the per-pupil savings, for which populations (looking carefully for any disproportionate impact), and what are the risks?

There needs to be a very clear analysis showing these options in a comparable way, including by impacted population.

And then to strengthen fiscal oversight from the board, I would restore the board’s finance committee. I would create a process to involve our labor, city and state partners at key parts of budget development. And I would have an independent third party audit the district’s finances and brief the board at least 2x/year (state auditor or OSPI).

Community Partnership and Board Operations
What will you do to improve relationships with the community, specifically with parents and
educators?

I believe that every voice matters and that it is the duty and responsibility of those in power to create spaces for people with diverse perspectives and experiences. Improving how the community engagement and communications departments function at Seattle Public Schools must be a priority of the new superintendent, and something the school board holds the superintendent accountable for.

Transparency on the budget - as covered elsewhere here - is a key starting place. But the same is needed for enrollment and staffing decisions. What is driving the current approach, what are the other options, and most importantly - what are the comparable costs and impacts of each option. Sharing this information and creating space for engagement from parents and educators will go a long way toward rebuilding trust in the district.

School Closures
Did you support or oppose the recent school closure proposals? Do you think that school
closures/consolidations should be considered in the coming 5 years?

I did not support the recent proposal. Closing schools is incredibly disruptive and, on its own, leads to relatively low savings.

Certainly addressing the district's structural deficit will require difficult decisions and trade-offs, but the district must be transparent about all options and the comparable per student costs or savings of each option. That data and information must be shared with all constituents - community, labor, city, state - and authentic engagement must happen before final decisions are made.

Socioeconomic Equity
What policies or budget actions would you support that would reduce socioeconomic and racial
disparities among Seattle Public Schools students?

One of the most important ways to ensure equitable resource allocation is to ensure that budgetary decisions consider the per-pupil cost of each action and the specific populations - if any - that would be disproportionately impacted or disproportionately benefit from each decision. And this analysis needs to be transparent.

Academic Rigor and Highly Capable Services What should SPS do to improve academic rigor? Do you believe SPS should provide advanced learning opportunities such as Walk to Math and Highly Capable Services? How do you envision delivering Highly Capable Services within SPS?

Academic excellence and rigor has declined in SPS and absolutely must be addressed - for all students. Families have been clear - they are incredibly unhappy with the district’s dismantling of the advanced learning options. Through universal testing, the district had made progress on increasing the diversity of those identified as performing at advanced levels. But enrollment or participation in the program still did not reflect the diversity of that qualified population. The solution was not to scrap the program, but rather to make it more welcoming and determine how it could better fit the needs of more families. This is the work that must happen now - and yes, it can start with Walk to Math and other similar simple school-based solutions. But the district must outline the different best-practice and feasible approaches (including cost/student analysis for each) to offering advanced learning and engage families in discussing those options and trade-offs.

Special Education and English Language Learners

How will you improve the delivery of special education services to students in SPS? How will you improve the delivery of education to English language learners?

SPS is making some strides on inclusionary practices with mandatory principal training/ professional development but more is needed. Labor and families are the two biggest constituents here and both must help create feasible (financially and workload) proposals that aim to consistently improve special education services for students.

Enrollment Decline

More than 20% of Seattle children are enrolled in private school (second-highest in the country). Do you believe SPS should try to attract and enroll more families? If so, what would you do to achieve that goal? What degree of enrollment choice should be allowed?

SPS’ declining enrollment is driven both by demographic shifts - fewer births and fewer families with children living in Seattle, and by choice - families opting out of SPS.

The school district needs to listen to those families that have left, have thought of leaving, OR have never chosen the public schools. Like all parents, they want to know that the school their children attend will provide high quality learning experiences and be a welcoming and safe community. And they want consistency and stability in leadership.

The district can keep and attract more families if it has high quality options, demonstrates results, and builds confidence in its leadership.

School Diversity
Should SPS offer a variety of schools with different building sizes, curriculum formats (e.g.,
STEM, DLI, expeditionary) and grade bands (e.g., K-8)? Why or why not?

Yes. Families have said again and again that they want some choice in the schools and programs that their students attend. Families want this choice because of special needs of their students, sibling or family convenience, or feeling more welcome in a particular setting.

Equitable choice can have a cost, especially a transportation cost. And trade-offs may be needed in terms of what schools can and cannot offer. But if families want this choice, the district needs to outline the different approaches for structuring this school-level variety and the associated per-pupil costs for each approach. Total transparency of costs, benefits, risks, and disproportionate impacts must be shared with families to get their input and feedback.

Seattle needs to return to a process where this kind of choice is welcome and the process to navigate it is clear, transparent and equitable.

Budget & Efficiency

Beyond advocating for more state funding, what specific steps should SPS take to improve its operational efficiency and fiscal health?

Even after the McCleary settlement that attempted to address Washington’s constitutional obligation to fully fund its public schools, Washington state continues to underfund key elements of public education. This includes funding for special education services, transportation, adjustments for inflation, regional equalization concerns, etc.

Seattle must continue to advocate for the state to address these issues even as it - like every district is required to - works to operate within its current revenue constraints. This will involve hard tradeoffs and the best way to determine the path forward is by total transparency - what are the options that can improve the district's financial health, what are the per-pupil savings of each, who/what will be most impacted - and then through authentic engagement with constituents.

Student Safety

What should SPS do to improve physical safety for students at school and in getting to and from school?

The most important thing SPS can do to improve student and staff safety is to partner - share information, work together, track data - with the community and city, because safety in the communities surrounding schools should be a shared responsibility.

Absolutely strengthening intervention and restorative programs within schools should continue, but data on participation and incident tracking must be captured and transparently shared. The number of lockdowns and shelters in place in some schools is incredibly damaging and disruptive - and those are almost all because of incidents outside of schools. Partnering with the city (parks, Dept of Ed, SPD), county (Metro), and community organizations - and being open to tracking and sharing effectiveness data will be critical to improving the safety and security of staff and students.

Role of the School Board (SOFG) Since 2021 the board has followed a way of operating called Student Outcomes Focused Governance (SOFG) that has been the subject of recent media questioning. Do you believe SOFG has been a successful model for the board to date and do you support continuing to implement it?

Effective school boards are focused on policy and governance, they set clear goals for student achievement and align resources toward those goals, they are data-driven, and they are collaborative - with each other and the superintendent.

Seattle has not had this kind of functioning board for too long. The current approach to governance has not worked - whether it is the specific model or implementation of it. The district has jumped from crisis to crisis, there have not been clear achievement goals for all students, resources have not been aligned, data has not been visible, and divisions have been all too visible. None of the hallmarks of an effective board have been visible.

And certainly the elimination of a finance committee in the middle of a budget crisis shows poor judgement. If this is what Student Outcomes Focused Governance looks like - it is clearly not serving Seattle’s students, staff or families.